


Almost, But Not Entirely

by AbsurdHerb



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Arasaka corp (derogatory), Canon Compliant, Corpo V (Cyberpunk 2077), Enemies to Friends, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Spoilers, The Devil Ending (Cyberpunk 2077), Vignette, maybe? - Freeform, so you already know it's gonna hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:34:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29146014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbsurdHerb/pseuds/AbsurdHerb
Summary: A few vignettes of a V and Johnny who never got along.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand & Male V, Johnny Silverhand & V
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Almost, But Not Entirely

**Author's Note:**

> I made a V who HATED Johnny, and it was absolutely heartbreaking because Johnny still changes. Johnny still offers his life up for you. Johnny still does his damn best to save you, even if you rebuff him at every turn. In the end, he's angry--but he's also disappointed. So I wrote this little love letter to their way too complicated relationship.

Johnny hates Mikoshi. He hates cyberspace in general if he’s honest. He hates the cold. He hates the empty. He hates the pressure, he hates the distance, and more than anything, he hates how much time he has to think.

He doesn’t fucking _want_ to think.

They were supposed to shred him. That had been the agreement. A final favor, a mercy killing. Arasaka hadn’t stuck to it. Huge surprise. How naive could V be? And how naive was Johnny for trusting him?

If he thinks about V, he’ll be here all day.

Ah, hell. It’s not as if he’s short on time. 

//

_Bang._

Skull against glass. Skull gives. Blood spatters. 

_Bang._

In a contest of will, Johnny will always win. 

_Bang._

He took down Arasaka Tower.

 _Bang._

Who the hell is this merc to stand in his way? He’s trash, literal, actual trash, left bleeding out in a landfill.

 _Bang_. 

Fuck, this is gonna hurt. Hurts already. He pauses to breathe through it, regain control. The merc’s awareness surges underneath him, flickering in and out. He’s half-dead, but ready, watching for the slightest falter.

 _Bang_. 

He won’t find one.

_Bang._

Frankly, Johnny’s done more destructive things. To himself and to others. Like that one time—

_Bang._

Like—

_Bang._

Why can’t he fucking think? He steadies himself and—

_Bang._

Something howls inside his head, too distant and too close. Too foreign and too familiar. A stranger in his face, his clothes, his body, his memory, his thoughts. A tag-along to his greatest—

 _Failure_ , the stranger whispers. _They rebuilt it, you know. So many died. Corpos, sure, at first. Then more from the fallout. Nomads by the droves. What was it—a million, said and done?_

“I didn’t want them to die,” he rasps with the stranger's voice. Blood drips into the corner of his mouth. The flavor turns his stomach.

 _Killed ‘em just the same_. _Killing me too_. _Yourself ‘longside_. The stranger laughs, acidic. _Some fuckin’ victory_.

Johnny leans against the window. He would stand, but his head reels in rebellion. V’s head. V’s head reels.

That’s the only window V needs. Before he realizes it, Johnny’s moving of another’s volition, and he recedes, inch by unwilling inch until he’s confined to the mind. Part of him wants to fight it again. The rest of him is just too fucking tired.

“I’m gonna live,” V whispers, hands shaking, head bleeding. “I’m gonna live.”

Who’s he trying to convince?

//

Two weeks have passed since V died. Four days have passed since V woke up. Four days have passed since V and Johnny spoke. Even if V’s head may jerk instinctively at the sound of Johnny’s voice, or if his eyes linger where Johnny stands, he steadfastly refuses any actual interaction.

So Johnny knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this isn’t going to go well.

“Call her,” he says.

V pockets the phone without so much as a glance in his direction.

“Oh. Ok. You’re really gonna ghost your dead choom’s ma? Cause it’s, what, more convenient?”

 _Kinder,_ V grinds out. It’s almost impressive how reluctant he can make a thought.

“Ooh,” Johnny scoffs. “Someone’s feeling delusional today. Gonna explain that, or do you let your idiocy speak for itself?”

V doesn’t respond. Shocker.

“V, she was the first to call you—”

“Don’t _fuckin’_ use that name!”

V’s irritation flashes across him three seconds delayed, but unmistakable nonetheless. He sighs, pinches his nose. “Actually, don’t use any name. Just go ahead and stop talking to me. Forever.”

“Trust me,” Johnny sneers. “If I could be anywhere else, I would.”

V begins to walk away, then turns heel and paces back. Smart. He can’t run. Not from Johnny, and not from this.

“She would want to hear from you,” Johnny tries.

V’s shoes are too classy for this part of town. They click against the pavement, imperative and distinct. If he were even two shades less intimidating, gangers would've looped twice round the block to zero him and pick over the corpse.

“V!” 

Out of every reaction Johnny might have expected, he did not expect V to stop and actually look at him, fingers dug deep enough into his arm that even Johnny can feel the bruise.

One thought slams into his mind, overbearingly potent.

 _Talk_.

“Look. I—I don’t usually give advice, but…fuck it, here goes. Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

Just those words take a piece out of him. A chunk of pride slips away. Funny how V, so prideful himself, is the one to break past that cherished facade.

“Say goodbye to the people you love. You know what I mean, right? Jackie Welles was your best choom, and you don’t find a lot of straight-up peeps like that in NC. Best thing you can do is remember them.”

Saburo had made a special visit, not too long after the Tower fell. He had recounted in excruciating detail every denouncement of Johnny’s actions. One denouncement was Kerry’s. For that, Saburo deigned to share video footage. Then he read off a full casualty list, following it up with Arasaka’s plan for rebuilding. 

Johnny had never felt smaller. He’d never felt more empty. Still, that glimpse of Kerry was the greatest gift he got in his fifty years of isolation. He had a friend who hated him, blamed him, and missed him all the same.

“You’re fucked in the head,” V sneers. “You know that, right?”

Johnny knows. Oh, he knows.

He scoffs. “What’s that make you?”

//

The night had rolled over the city hours ago. Johnny noticed at the time—he has plenty of time to notice the small things, on his delayed channel to the real world—but V hadn’t. Maybe that’s why V scowls at the sky when he finally stumbles out of the club and sprawls against the cold and unyielding brick. His limbs flop about loosely, forced into relaxation by the copious amount of alcohol he’s been drinking. Johnny Silverhands, of course. Jackass. Now Johnny can’t even complain about the taste.

“Hey, Johnny,” V slurs. “Wanna know a secret?”

If Johnny hadn’t felt the inebriation in his own mind, this would have been when he realized just how far gone V was. He and V don’t chat. V pretends he isn’t there, calls out when he’s dying, refuses to smoke, and gets a little more desperate every day. Johnny talks to an audience of one, tries to plan, pleads for V to save himself, and comes like a dog when he calls.

“You don’t trust me,” Johnny says.

V’s lips stretch tight across his teeth. It almost resembles a grin. “Who you gonna tell?”

Johnny leans against the opposite wall and doesn’t respond. 

“I was really, really good at my job,” V admits. “Arasaka Counter-Intel.” The phrase rolls off his tongue with a long habit of intonation. Johnny can smell the Corpo stink on it. “Fucked people over daily. Got fucked over back. Stole secrets. Planted ‘em. Killed people, sometimes, or ordered ‘em killed. And I fuckin’ loved it.”

When Johnny first stumbled across those particular memories, he’d hated them. Right now, he hates the elation that hovers over the memory. The rush of power, slick like silk against his skin. All too keen eyes, and all too willing hands. Anything, _anything_ , so long as he didn’t have to be afraid. Anything to keep him off the streets.

“Twenty-two,” V says. “Twenty-two. I was twenty-two, and pretty fucking near the top of the world. Higher than a slum kid should dream. And I didn’t fuck my boss for it—”

People hissing in the shadows, watching his ascent with envious eyes. Some rumors he could ignore. Others he had to quash. Blood on his hands, from fingertip to wrist. Washing methodically in the restroom sink, using cold water, so as not to set the stains.

“—I was just that _fucking_ good.”

If anyone had told him this at a time when Johnny was anything other than an engram, even odds say he would have shot him.

Johnny lights a cig instead. “You’re sharing this, why?”

V shudders and stands. Their head whirls precariously with the motion. “Corpocog,” he says. “Thought you should know.”

//

V lived, and he woke up in his own body. Johnny didn’t expect thanks, and he didn’t get any. _So. Johnny Silverhand has a conscience after all,_ V had commented. Sarcasm colored the tone, but underneath that laid a shade of sincerity and surprise. 

Baby steps. 

Of course, baby steps can only carry you so far, and Johnny needs them to be farther than they are. Johnny needs them to be square, to be honest, to be face to face and fully invested so they can win the fight to come. So, from the baby steps, they proceed to the Olympic long jump.

“Would you take a bullet for me?”

It’s a hypothetical in only the faintest pretense. This thing between them means life or death. More specifically, it means life _and_ death—one for one of the pair, and one for the other.

“Fucking dumbass question,” V says.

“Yes or no?” 

“I…I don’t know.”

Close. So close. So fucking close. 

“Yes or no?”

V’s tone grows sharper, lower, and more menacing. It’s the tone he used in counter-intelligence. It’s the tone he used when he swore to kill Deshawn. 

It’s the tone he uses when he lies.

“No.”

//

You can’t talk in cyberspace, really. Then again, the two of them had never talked in realspace either. They were two consciousnesses, sharing one stream of thought, locked together in one body, hand in unwilling hand. Now, they are a construct and a person, peeled apart by the same knife, sold by themselves to the same lowest bidder.

Johnny knows V—at this point, he’s more V than V is. He shares that thought with a word. Or is it words with a thought? 

_So if you’re here to tell me something, it’s cause you need to hear it yourself_.

V’s eyes fix on Johnny. Cyberspace blurs him, mars him, makes V-the-code vulnerable where V-the-person was not. Arasaka will break him, Johnny knows. Has broken him in part already.

 _I just wanted to say good-bye,_ V replies.

Confused. Disappointed. Bitter. Sad. Betrayed. Johnny doesn’t know who’s feeling what and he doesn’t care. It doesn’t make a difference now. Maybe it never did.

V tells him he’s slated for death. That the chip which houses him will be shredded. 

Sure, there’s more glorious ways to die, but it was never about glory, or about Arasaka, for that matter. It was about morals. About principles, and goals and—

It’s the end. V’s on Arasaka’s payroll and operating table. And all Johnny wants is the old V. For a moment. A minute. A flash.

 _Conversation’s pointless._ V says. _Goodbye, Johnny_.

_Remember what Dex asked you? “Quiet life or blaze of glory?”_

That one he plucked from V’s thoughts, fresh on the forefront. His mind had poked at it constantly, kept the wound raw, like a sore on the inside of his cheek. Johnny got it. V was dying, and people tend to die regretting. 

_Sure I remember_. 

The thought has a sharp twist of nostalgia, but not the regret that it had always carried. Should always carry.

 _Shame you chose wrong,_ Johnny sighs. _Damn shame._


End file.
